Well, it looks like the experiment was a success! I used the money that you lot gave me on the first day of my Beggin' Marathon to fund some advertising (and then on the second day, and the third, and... well, you get the idea), and we have 2,157 players at time of writing. The donations bar has been green for the first time since we started using it, and I can quite confidently say that I'm happy for Improbable Island to remain my full-time job.

So, we should probably start thinking of things for all these lovely donators to spend their donator points on, eh?

Planned Donator features:

The "Buy your way off the FailBoat" option generates an instant New Day in exchange for 25dp, but only works on the FailBoat. It'd be nice to tie the Saved Days feature in with donations somehow, as well as offering an instant New Day in exchange for DP's while the player is on the mainland. Ideas as to how this can be done, and suggested prices, would be welcome.
(I think I'd like to include a pref so that donators can only buy one new day per system-newday, so that they don't have too huge an advantage - I do want to offer incentives, but I don't want non-donating players to be unable to compete against donating players)

Item of the Month:
With the new IItems system, creating items is easy. Here are some ideas for items that would be rented to the player in exchange for DP's. I have it in mind that there would be a finite supply of these items, and they'd be rented by the day, as these items are rather powerful:

Crate Locator:
This little device of brass and magnetized needles will always point you in the direction of the closest item crate while on the World Map.

eBoy Ticker:
A brass frame about the size of a paperback book, plus extendable radio antenna, shows the current prices of all items for sale in all eBoy branches via an array of constantly-clattering number reels.

Joker Hat:
The lovely thing about the IItem system (one of the lovely things, anyway) is that the player can have any number of possible inventories - they're all stored in one big serialized array for each player. I designed it this way knowing that sooner or later I'd want to do things like saddle bags on mounts, storage lockers in dwellings and so forth. A Joker Hat basically adds extra inventory space.

Other possibilities:

Extended Edition:
This is my favourite Donator idea so far. All this does is add new flavour text in the form of encounters, extra subplots, "deleted scenes" and so forth - the donator receives no in-game advantages, but they do get a bit more content. Current descriptions are extended, more dialogue options are added, silly little subplots are introduced, and so forth. I like this idea because it doesn't unbalance the game, it lets me write new aesthetic and cosmetic stuff without having to worry about making it functionally exciting, and it feels... right, somehow. There's something satisfying about the phrase "I've bought the extended version." This is probably 'cause I've recently watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my housemate (who hadn't seen it until now!).

Any thoughts from you guys on what you'd like to see in the Hunter's Lodge?

I like the IItem of the Month idea, but the Extended Edition idea had me drooling. I would definitely buy that.

As for other ideas... hmm... how about some sort of skill experience multiplier? Like, the amount of exp you would get from standard fighting all day is multiplied by 1.25. I don't know how unbalancing that would be, though.

As for ideas, I think the skill multiplier is a good idea. Also, maybe you could offer an item that would keep you from losing stamina due of starvation for maybe three days or so. It would reel those who don't want to spend hard earned req on food.

I make the many models of a mutant individual. To make them I use vegetables, animals, and minerals. From robot bugs to zombie bears to many singing barnacles.

All of your planned donor features are good so far. One thing I'd really like to see would be a custom weapon name that would stick, ie every time I but a riot hammer (just dreaming, so far, but I hope to have enough dks to be able to buy one soon), MY riot hammer would be called a Driftwood Staff.

Some way to buy some good, healthy food. Think that with all that we got right now, we need some way to easily access some good eats with DP. Plus, it'd probably hold off the people that want restaurants in AceHigh and CC404 and such for a while, since they could feasibly access the Hunter's lodge and purchase from whatever catering service they offer there.

Extended edition. Yes.

All I want from it though, is an indicator that what I'm viewing right then, is part of the extended edition. The thing I hate the most about watching the 'Director's cut' and 'Uncut' versions of movies? Is when I sit there and then look at whoever I was watching it with, frown, and say "What the Hell was so uncut about that?" And then they have to explain which five minutes of the movie I didn't see before.

All of your planned donor features are good so far. One thing I'd really like to see would be a custom weapon name that would stick, ie every time I but a riot hammer (just dreaming, so far, but I hope to have enough dks to be able to buy one soon), MY riot hammer would be called a Driftwood Staff.

I don't know a thing about coding, is this in any way possible?

Extended Edition made my eyes glow. Woo-hoo!

Also, Stan, I was pushing for that too. To have an entire custom armory? Where all of your weapons are called something specific that you decide whenever you pick them up? Lovely. Then a Baseball bat will forever be, a Louisville Slugger to me.

Incidentally... Could there perhaps be a feature where we could upload an icon for our weapon?

Allow a player to purchase, for instance, a Louisville Slugger from the Hunter's Lodge. They can then use this to concuss Misery Guts in the Comms Tent and replace him with a mannequin. Out of the goodness of their hearts, they would continue to donate five requisition every time they visited, pressing it into his clammy hand while he lies slumped in a corner.

A radio.

I was planning to try to code this in Improbable Labs, but I think a 2.5 - 3 kg item in your inventory which would allow you to tune into any Outpost while traveling around on the world map would be a useful addition to the Island.

I'll be first in line for the Extended Edition, and I agree with the other suggestions so far -- permanent items and an inventory to select them from? Oh my, fetch the smelling salts! *swoon*

either as any weapon i am holding will be identified as "excaliber", be it spork, bat or chainsaw;

or replace each unique weapon name with my preferred name: anytime i buy a spork it would be "french tickler", a bat "tasty brain extractor", or the chainsaw as "can opener extraordinaire".

the key though, is the persistence across drive kills.

the eBoy ticker and extra trunk "joker hat" also sound intriguing.

the crate locator though sounds powerful. i know you just threw it out there without much detail, but my unsolicited thoughts on it are thus: either make it short range ( you are either within one or two squares of the crate) or it only has enough power to find one crate per day.

(I think I'd like to include a pref so that donators can only buy one new day per system-newday, so that they don't have too huge an advantage - I do want to offer incentives, but I don't want non-donating players to be unable to compete against donating players)

I speak as one who has yet to give you a brass farthing. (I'm on the case. I needed to get a paypal account. In order to do that I needed to get a credit card. For that I needed incriminating photo's of the bank managers wife, etc. etc. (I'm a luddite, what can I say?) Now I need some money to donate. It's on it's way. honest.)
Anyway. There's a lot of other factors that hinder straight competition, someone who joins in a months time will always be a month behind. How much time a day can you spend on here, and so on. So I think this is possibly less important than might at first appear.
What is most likely to kick my arse into gear? The extended version. Very much so.

why: even after i've stuffed myself to the gills with steak, i still clean my kills, so i can get the cleaning XP.

ideas:
- allow players to 'rent' space in a walk-in freezer in the hunter's lodge
- sell preserving salts in the lodge so players can salt their meat
- when houses come back online, sell refrigerator/ freezers to players to put in them

last thoughts: i don't think this would be an unbalancing change. at the most, between the time a person gets full and can no longer cook and eat their kills and the time they get exhausted from hunting, i figure they might get enough meat to make an additional 20% stamina at the start of the new day, when they can again cook meat. 20% would be a nice perk, but i think the average would probably be more like 10%~12%.and i don't much feel like waving good bye to the meat as it crawls away in the morning.

One thing that I'd like to see (not in the Lodge, however) would be a way for younger players, who don't have credit cards, to be able to donate.
For instance, somehow be able to donate from debit cards?
That would be nice, so that the only way to get DP's isn't just from suggesting monsters (if that comes back), or other nice players giving them their own DP's that they themselves bought.

While we're on the subject of renaming weapons, I seem to recall someone suggesting being able to rename mounts also. Not something I'd do myself, but then I wouldn't rename my weapon either. Some people might like that.

While we're on the subject of renaming weapons, I seem to recall someone suggesting being able to rename mounts also. Not something I'd do myself, but then I wouldn't rename my weapon either. Some people might like that.

Hairy, this is already a feature of the lodge:

thru the magic of cut and paste:
Vodyanoy the Son of Budget Horse

unless you were referring to the desire of some who wanted to eliminate the class (such as 'kittybike' or 'the son ...' as seen here) from dangling off the end like some useless appendage. i recall that discussion and if that's what you had in mind, then please ignore my blathering

What if we could have 'tame' captured versions of some of the monsters around the island? They'd work kind of like a grenade, maybe. Buy it and you get 5 uses or so, and they'd have various effects.
So a 'tamed' banana peel monster, thrown at an enemy, could trip (deal some damage) and then bite (deal minor damage for a couple rounds) them.